The Eternal Peace

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Gita series – part 33. Bhagavad Gita Chapter II. Verses – 71 and 72.

Krishna now concludes Chapter II called ‘sankhya yoga’. “That person who relinquishes all his desires, devoid of self-concern and ego and without smallest wants, he alone can realise peace. Arjuna! This is the stage of ‘Self-realization’. After reaching this stage, that person never gets bewildered. Even at the time of his death, he is steadfast in this stage and attains eternal bliss” (verses 71 and 72). Krishna concludes this chapter by high spotting the end result of pursing the path of sankhya yoga. The first thing that Krishna advocates is to get rid of desires. Desire is caused by mind when it is in an unsatisfied state. Desire can be countered by faith, positive thoughts and affirmations. Most of our desires are caused by longing for objects that are beyond our reach. When we are unable to attain what we long for, it leads to frustration and anger. Therefore, desire is the root cause for all mental afflictions. Once the desire is relinquished, the other elements like anger, frustration, attachments, etc do not manifest. This is the ideal condition for mental peace. Another factor is ego. Krishna distinguishes between ego and self-concern.

Ego is related to conscious mind, when it is devoid of forgiveness and compassion and operates only internally. Ego is the by-product of intelligence and forms a veil around the Supreme Self. Unless ego is abstracted, the Self can never be realised. Therefore, ego becomes the potential enemy to self-realization that is to be destroyed at its infancy. But self-concern is a process of attempting to get personal recognition leading to unreasonable self-esteem. Self-concern is generally achieved through unacceptable means and actions. Self concern always works externally. Apart from desire, ego and self concern are also to be relinquished to realize the Supreme Spirit or the Brahman within. The self-realized person never descends from this level. He has reached this stage after persistent practice by pursuing a rigorous path. By now, he would have realized the difference between this stage and all other lower stages of consciousness. He would have realized the eternal happiness of his present stage.

His mind would have got fused to this stage of eternal bliss. As his mind gets fixed on the Supreme Self, it does not get afflicted by material and objective pleasures. There is no cause for any bewilderment due to the fixate stage of his mind. He clearly understands that gross body is susceptible to decaying and merely acts as a sheath or cover to the Brahman within. The process of this covering is called maya or delusion. Therefore, he does not attach importance to his physical body. His entire thought is fixed only on the internal self- illuminating Atman or Brahman. Even at the time of his death, he continues to fix his concentration only on the Brahman. His soul peacefully leaves his body and merges with the Brahman not to be born again. The merger of this soul with the Creator is called as ‘eternal bliss’. This concludes Chapter II of Bhagavad Gita called Sankhya Yoga.

So basically This chapter speaks of desires which should taken out by detachment, ego by surrender (love the person you hate etc) and do the activity for the sake of doing it. But Krishna also says that why are bothered about killing your relatives as I have already killed them, meaning everything that we do here is predestined, also goes with the saying that what is meant to happen will happen, so isn't the thought of surrender and wanting of infinite is a natural tendency God's actions? Nothing that we think we are doing is in fact we are led in doing it?

He says that things are happening due to one’s karma. What is disdained to happen will surely happen and we cannot prevent them. But, intensity of suffering can be reduced to a great extent by surrendering to the Divine.